ROCCAT Savu Gaming Mouse

Written by Sean Cahill on 9/27/2012 for PC  

The PC gaming community is one that thrives upon innovation, customization, and comfort when it comes to hardware and accessories.  Outside of keyboards, there may not be a more important device that needs to be reliable than your mouse.  I have found that, while many PC titles, especially MMOs, require the ability for firing off macros that do multiple functions at once time, sometimes a gamer just needs a good, simple mouse to handle his or her needs.  ROCCAT has realized that the most complicated mouse isn’t always the best choice, and created the ROCCAT Savu.
 
Specifications

DIMENSIONS	7.2 CM x 12 CM
DPI	400, 800, 1600, 4000 (Adjustable)
Maximum Speed	60 inches per second
On board memory	544 kB
Wired/Wireless	Wired – 1.8m braided USB cable
Adjustable weight	No
Polling rate	125, 250, 500, 1000 Hz (Adjustable)

  
Having been used to larger gaming mice due to having a bit larger than normal hand size, the smaller Savu took a little bit of time to adjust to since I was switching from ROCCAT’s Kone [+] mouse that is quite a bit larger.  The Savu is really a no-frills mouse that gets the job done.  There is still access to the ROCCAT Driver and Macro Manager, considering that the standard two side buttons on the left side are for use with EASY-SHIFT and macro programming.  It doesn’t take very long to program the buttons, as expected, so whether it’s for a quick change in use for an MMO, casual gaming, or even as a hotkey for a Ventrilo or TeamSpeek server, any gamer can find a use for the side buttons due to the simple placement.
 

In comparison to the Kone [+] mouse, there are only a couple of buttons taken away, mainly the DPI quick functions, which can be seen as either positive or negative.  I found myself trying to hit a button that wasn’t there since I use a different DPI setting for casual computer use in comparison to playing a game, so I found it just slightly frustrating to go into the macro manager to change things up, though the side buttons can be programmed for this feature if necessary.  However, this is knit-picking.  The mouse functions exceptionally in both aspects of use without any real need for a pad for the laser.  The scroll wheel responds as expected, with no jumps, double scrolls, or lack of performance when going through websites, documents, or anything else require scrolling, which is always a necessary piece of equipment for a gamer or PC user.
 
Customization is not an issue for the Savu, of course.  The light system, similar to the programming of the Kone [+], can be changed to do whatever a gamer wants with it, whether it’s to fix it to one color, flash to multiple colors, or even fade in and out.  Of course, it’s just for show.  The lighting really does not do anything other than give the mouse personality, but it’s never a bad thing to have a mouse that draws attention to it, whether it’s complex or simple.  The nice part of it is that the mouse can react to button presses, scrolling, macros, etc.
 
It does bear stressing that this mouse is not really designed to be for those who need a lot of performance or features from their mouse, The Savu is a hybrid mouse, aimed at those who are will be playing gaming as well as doing general office and internet work.  There are gaming mice that have much higher DPI settings, though everyone is different when it comes to these needs.  4000 DPI is still a fairly high setting, but I did find that I was wanting more when playing an FPS title such as Battlefield 3 from time to time, but the lower settings of even 1600 was enough to play Guild Wars 2 with, though I did prefer the 4000 DPI setting with many of my tests with the Savu.  I also feel as though that having the mouse wheel without horizontal clicking/scrolling takes away from it just a bit.  Of course, that’s what Easy-Shift[+] is for.